Charlotte Saphier was born in a pharmacy at one side of Tompkins Square Park in 1915. Her family were Orthodox Jewish Americans. She was interested in art and photography as a child and indulged these interests by joining sculpture classes at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum when she was 11. From 13 to 17 she was a member of the prestigious Clay Club where she was recognized as a prodigy. At 18, she began to study art at Pratt. Around that time, she was a member of the Photo League of New York—also prestigious. Here she met the man who was to become her husband, Carter Winter, a well-known author, editor, photographer and industrial designer. (As good commies, Carter and Charlotte were partners, but they were not formally married until Carter’s final illness (lung cancer). During the last two weeks of his life, while at the hospital, he married Charlotte so that the inheritance of the house on Horatio Street would be easier in New York State law.) They lived in a small 1831 Greek Revival house in Greenwich Village, New York. She was, for many years, the art director of Architectural Forum, then of Architecture Plus—leading design journals. She was an important and stalwart defender of Greenwich Village against the depredations of urban renewal at a time when those two words meant total destruction of the urban environment. The author Jane Jacobs, Charlotte’s colleague both at Architectural Forum and in the battle for saving the Village said: “Charlotte worked tirelessly to stop the madness. She was a fierce advocate of infill housing, a concept unheard of at the time. She was devoted to her neighbors and her neighborhood, and was very much loved. She never threw her weight around or got noisy. She was a great force for good. I worked with Charlotte closely and intensely for many years and I never knew her to do a mean or devious thing. She was greatly talented and never self-important, and I shall miss her terribly” (The Livable City, The Municipal Art Society of New York, June 1987. Volume II, number 1). Charlotte was a tailor, a collector of sewing tools and notions. She played clavichord—one that her husband Carter designed and built. She loved baroque music. She spent many hours behind a camera and in the darkroom. Her photos of New York City appeared in both of the magazines she worked at. She trained her niece Aileen Winter Mostel, to design and edit magazine copy, after Carter died in 1977. Aileen took over the art directorship of The Livable City from Charlotte when death came for her in 1987.